


Creation

by Cephy



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Community: areyougame, Engineering, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-03
Updated: 2011-10-03
Packaged: 2017-10-24 06:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cephy/pseuds/Cephy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was, he had to admit, a strange hobby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Final Fantasy VII, Reeve Tuesti: Inspire (a person who can breathe life into inanimate objects, such as the Cait Sith dolls) - making friends had a whole new meaning".

It was, he had to admit, a strange hobby. He had dozens of little creatures cluttering up his shelves, inspired by the things he saw: a tiny brown mouse crawling through an abandoned train car, or one of the rare spring dragonflies to show in the city, or a fuzzy green caterpillar clinging to a concrete wall. He couldn't quite help himself. He watched them, saw the way they moved, and he couldn't help but try to figure out how it all worked, the principles of joint and lever and force all tangling together into something wondrous.

It was a short and slippery slope down from observing to analyzing to imagining to _creating_.

Granted, his finished products didn't bear _that_ much resemblance to their source materials, especially the early ones. He could see it, though. He'd done his best to capture the essence of what had captivated him to begin with, working within the limits of bolts and gears and other mechanical necessities. For the dragonfly, it was the whir of its wings; for the caterpillar, the bunch and stretch of its walk. It was interesting, satisfying work. And as a side benefit, the necessary concentration helped to quiet his mind when he went too far into the minutiae of urban planning and lost sight of where he'd started. This work, it was something he could put in front of himself, see what was wrong and fix it. Make something wonderful out of a box of scraps.

He'd never tried anything larger than a crow, largely for reasons of space-- if he started in on larger creatures, it was only a matter of time before he wouldn't fit in his own apartment, after all. But when he left work late one evening and saw the skinny stray cat darting around the tower's side entrance, he was already mentally drawing up blueprints before he was halfway home.

Somewhere between closing his front door behind him and picking up his screwdriver he'd already decided to make this one _more_ than its predecessors. It was going to be bigger; he could use the bulk to his advantage, give it a more realistic outer shell. He was good enough at what he did, by now, that given enough time he could make it almost perfect.

He was halfway through designing the skeleton when the insidious thought occurred: _why stop there_? If he could make it meow, then he could give it an even better voice. If he could make its eyes move, then he could make them see. If he could make it walk on four limbs, then why not two? Why stop at _walking_ at all?

He went through four prototypes before he was satisfied with the basic design, seven more before he got the details right. It took him the better part of a year's puttering in the hours when he probably should have been sleeping. He designed a video headset that allowed him to see through the cat's eyes, wired in audio receivers so that he could hear through its ears. When it came time to give it a voice, it was whim that made him choose the charmingly bizarre accent of the janitor who covered his hallway, but the first time his creation croaked out a comment on untried speakers, he surprised himself by laughing out loud.

He hadn't necessarily tried to make it alive, that had never consciously been his purpose. But when the moment of truth came and he connected the final power supply, held his breath and stepped back, he could only watch as it lifted its head and looked back at him, and think: _yes_.


End file.
